March is Women’s History Month! We have teaching resources for teaching about women’s rights and changing roles in American history during this or any month.
Sign your class up for one of our free, interactive Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote distance learning programs. Programs are available for elementary, middle school, and high school students.
Using the founding documents of the United States and historical records at the National Archives, students will determine how and why women fought for the right to vote. Students will explore the challenges suffragists faced and discover why the fight for women’s voting rights persisted even after the ratification of the 19th Amendment.
Access hundreds of primary sources and teaching activities related to women on our Women’s Rights page on DocsTeach, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.
Find primary source sets on a variety of topics, including:
- Progressive Era Reform Movements
- The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
- Citizenship Rights
- Reproductive Rights
- Women in the Workforce
- Women’s Roles During WWI
- Women’s Roles During WWII
- Employment, Education & Consumer Rights
- The International Women’s Year and National Women’s Conference
- Women Who Pushed The Boundaries
We also have several activities ready to use in the classroom or online with your students. In our Extending Suffrage to Women activity, students use our Finding a Sequence tool to place letters, petitions, and photographs related to suffrage in the correct order, analyzing strategies and methods of the women’s suffrage movement along the way.
In Why Did Women Want the Right to Vote?, students compare and contrast four petitions in favor of woman suffrage to identify reasons why women wanted the right to vote.
We have a handful of short engaging analysis activities designed for elementary school students focusing on women pioneers such as Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Clara Barton, Sally Ride, and Amelia Earhart.
Find even more teaching activities on our Women’s Rights page, covering:
- the amendment process,
- the duration and techniques of the women’s suffrage movement,
- arguments for and against giving women the vote,
- a comparison of the women’s suffrage and Civil Rights movements, and
- how – for some – the struggle to vote persisted even after the 19th amendment.
Primary sources included in this post:
- Women Shipfitters Working on the USS Nereus, ca. 1943. From the Records of Naval Districts and Shore Establishments.
- Rosalynn Carter Speaks at the National Women’s Conference, 11/19/1977. From the Collection JC-WHSP: Carter White House Photographs Collection; Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, GA.
- Flag Bearer for Women’s Rights Standing Near White House, 1/30/1917. From the Records of the U.S. Information Agency.
- Eleanor Roosevelt Holding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 11/1949. From the Collection FDR-Photos: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library Photographs; Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, NY.
- Postcard from the Georgia Association Opposed to Woman’s Suffrage, ca. 1915. From the Records of the U.S. House of Representatives.
- Mary Church Terrell. From the Collection H: Harmon Foundation Collection.
- Mission Specialist Sally Ride at Forward Flight Deck Pilots Stations Controls, 6/1983. From the Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.